Antony’s Life Blog

 
(Picture is from stock.xchng.)

It is one of the most popular questions on the job interview. Liz Ryan from Business Week has an interesting opinion about this question. She thinks that it is one of the most stupid interview questions.

Here’s why it’s dumb. No company will guarantee you a job for five years, much less a career path. To construct such a plan for yourself, you’d have to make predictions about industries, companies, and your likes and dislikes that could only serve to constrain your choices. And in any case, why is it so all-fired important to have a dang career plan in mind? Every successful entrepreneur and many top corporate people will tell you their key to success: I did what I felt driven to do at the moment.

Anyway, where do I see myself in 5 years then?

• Living in a beautiful tropical country. Although I don’t see snow on Christmas/New Year, I am happy.
• Having 2 cute kids. One of them is going to kindergarten soon.
• Preparing for my retirement because it is just 2 years away. Yes, I am planning to retire at 40 years old.

 
(Picture is from stock.xchng.)

Honestly, I don’t have the highest-paying job in the mobile industry, but my salary is much higher than the salary of Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt. Not only that, it is also higher than the salary of Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs.

Reuters publishes the compensation of most public companies in the US. Here are some of them:

• Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple): $1 / year
• Jerry Yang (CEO of Yahoo): $1 / year
• Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google): $1,899 / year
• Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Founder of Google): $1,724 / year
• Roger Enrico (Chairman of Board of Director of Dreamworks Animation): $1 / year

Should I feel lucky to have much higher salary than many leaders in the high-tech industry? Probably not, because my stock options benefit is much lower than theirs.

(via The Detroit News.)

Most of you may know that the housing market in the US has gone crazy. The housing price has dropped very significantly in the last few months. For those who live in North America, you may hear about foreclosure almost everyday in the news.

I know that houses in some US cities are even cheaper than cars. Interestingly, today I read in the news that a bank has just sold his house in Detroit for $1. Yes, it is really $1.

Put on the market in January for $1,100, the house had no lookers other than the squatters who sometimes stayed there at night. Facing $4,000 in back taxes and a large unpaid water bill, the bank that owned the property lowered the price to $1.